Bunny Love
Bunny Love is the pilot episode of Superjail!, which first aired in 2007 during Adult Swim's "Night of 1000 Pilots". Four of the five potential shows broadcast on that night would be greenlit for full series, including this one. The pilot had been in the works since early 2005, and was originally slated to premiere in September of that year, but production delays and rewrites forced it to be pushed back until the script could be approved first. Storyline Pre-Credits An inmate known as Jacknife is released from prison, but instantly notices a nearby car and hijacks it, proceeding to run over and kill the driver. He then hears the man's daughter crying and notices that she wears a shirt reading "I Love Bunnies". He crashes the car into a bar to get a drink, and then walks into a nearby pet store. He walks past the irritated clerk and grabs a bunny, only to stuff it down the front of his pants, unnerving them. Before he can manage to escape, Jailbot bursts through the floor beneath the bunny case, scattering them and other pets about (killing several in the process). Jacknife throughs the bunny at Jailbot and tries to run, but is pummeled and electrocuted as Jailbot causes more havoc in the store. Jacknife's face is then smashed and he gets handcuffed and taken away, as Jailbot bursts out of the store (causing several animals to go free). The little girl is knocked over and becomes upset. Jailbot feels sorry for her and attempts to give her ice cream, but it hits her in the face, causing her to cry more. Jailbot then proceeds to drag Jacknife off to Superjail... Main Story Jailbot has carried Jacknife off to a strange volcano and drops him off into a cuckoo clock, which carries him into a tunnel and causes him to hatch out of an egg. He winds up in a hellish sort of room with a roller coaster, where he gets whacked over the head, stripped of all his clothing, washed and blow-dried, put into a prison coverall, and put on the coaster. He is next dropped into a completely white room, and finds a bottle reading "Drink Me". After drinking from the bottle, the room around him dissolves into an apparent hallucination of a grassy field with rainbows and he meets The Warden, who welcomes him to Superjail. The Warden then vanishes as he tells Jacknife to say hello to his roommate, who wakes him up with a punch. The inmate passes along a small container to his neighbor, and it winds up passed down the cells until a man named Gary gets ahold of it, revealing it to be a container of worms. He regurgitates a worm for his bird, but his roommate taunts him and offers to show him his own "worm". The bird flies over and rips the inmate's penis apart offscreen, splattering blood all over Gary. The bird then flies back with the remains of the penis, which they both chew on. Alice walks by the cells, holding a pink dress and a sandwich with the intent to torment an inmate. She opens up one of the quarantined cells to reveal her victim and tells him that it's "showtime", ordering him to put on the dress and disco-dance. She is then interrupted by a call from Jared, who tells her she's late for the meeting. Alice leaves, taking the sandwich with her, but decides to chuck both it and the communicator down a trash chute. Both items wind up intercepted by a pair of twins. Alice arrives at the Warden's office, where she and Jared argue briefly before the Warden enters to start the meeting. Jared shows a film reel of the topics, stating that there was a lava leak in Sector 7, along with a power loss in quadrants 5 through 9, and the cafeteria suffering spoilage. He believes that the Twins were responsible for those events (as a clip of them riding a tandem bike is shown on the reel), and suggests that their privileges be suspended. The Warden insists that he'll be the one to deal with them, but his cuckoo clock sounds off, marking the arrival of a new prisoner. Jailbot is called in and enters with Jacknife in tow. Alice explains that the criminal hadn't been out of "real jail" for more than a minute before he was caught, while Warden replies that he "hates real jail". Jared agrees that real jail never works. The Warden explains that after his father (The Prison Mogul) left him his jail, he swore to perfect the art of incarceration. As he felt the real world wasn't ready for his methods, he created the Superjail. Alice retrieves the dead, mangled bunny from Jailbot, and states that Jacknife gets off on rabbits. The Warden then presses a button, causing Jacknife to be loaded into a rocket ship and blasted into space. He strokes the fly-infested rabbit, but gets steadily rougher, finally ripping its skin off and placing it on his head. The Warden decides that every inmate will get a bunny suit. Jared is hard at work at his computer, calculating the amount of bunny costumes needed (over 70,000). He becomes frustrated with wondering how they'll be able to afford all of it, but a beer bottle appears, suggesting for Jared to drink him. Jared screams at the beer to leave him alone and slams the drawer shut. He then decides that they'll have to cut all the extra-curricular activities. A potted plant in his room then turns into a satellite and beams this information all the way to the vegetable garden outside. The talking vegetables panic over their fate, and are promptly mowed over by Jailbot. The Twins, spying on the activity while on a smoke break, decide that they'll have to investigate the Warden's plan. The two teleport into their laboratory, and hack into the mainframe computer. They change Jared's order of bunny costumes to also include wolf costumes, Jared only realizing the change all too late after he buys the suits. Later, Alice barges in on the inmates showering, and presents a pair of them with their new uniforms (one man receiving a wolf suit, and the other a bunny suit). The two inmates sit in their cell, arguing over the toilet seat having been left up. The one clad in the bunny suit tosses his ring off and tells the wolf he can have it back, but gets stabbed after the wolf-suited inmate retorts that he too can have the "promise shank" back. Outside, more fights begin to break out between the "bunny inmates" and the "wolf inmates". Jared panics over the possibility of losing his job, the Warden seems pleased with the chaos, and Alice is simply uninterested. Jared believes that the Twins have ruined everything, while the Warden says he'd like to congratulate them. Jailbot directs the flying eyeball machine down to the prison grounds (crushing a few inmates in the process), where the Twins are shown working out on a pair of stairclimbers and watching the fights brew. The Warden descends from a walkway in the eyeball, congratulating the Twins, but then telling them they should step it up, as it's time for a show. A full moon suddenly rises up into the sky, turning things to night. The Warden smirks and leaves, bidding the Twins "adios". While the wolf prisoners start to display actual wolf behavior, the Twins panic and increase the speed on their stairclimbers, causing them to become rocket-powered and blast them off to safety. A wolf inmate becomes an actual wolf and starts slaughtering bunny inmates, causing the rest to run for cover into a cafeteria. In the cafeteria, the lunch-ladies take note of the bunny inmates and decide to "clean up the meat delivery". A bloody showdown commences between the bunny inmates, the wolf inmates, and a group of lunch-ladies with chainsaws and cooking tools. But as a pair of inmates fight, they wind up knocking over the "Monday Mystery Meat" and an electrified processor, causing the meat to come to life as a monster which reduces the inmates to pure skeleton with its touch. The lunch-ladies praise the monster, though it devours three of them, causing the remaining two to run in fear. The meat-monster then crashes through the wall, creating an escape path. Jacknife comes crashing back down in the space rocket and notices the hole, using it to run off to his freedom. Later on in the cafeteria, the Warden and Jared dine on the mystery meat. The Warden declares that his plan tastes great, and winks at the audience. Stinger The starved inmate munches happily on some meat in the cafeteria, but the meat monster grabs ahold of him and drags him into its pot to swallow him up. Character Appearances *The Warden *Alice *Jared *Jailbot *The Twins *Jacknife *Bird and Gary *A pair of gay inmates *A perverted inmate *"Skinny" *A little girl *The Prison Mogul (shown in photograph) *Various inmates *The lunch-ladies, including Janice *Mystery Meat Monster Production Credits *Created by: Christy Karacas *Director: Christy Karacas *Writers: Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick, Ben Gruber *Animation Production: Augenblick Studios *Animation Direction: Aaron Augenblick *Animation: Chris Burns, Kristofer Wollinger *Character Layout: Christy Karacas, M. Wartella *Background Layout: Jeremy Jusay, Will Krause *Editing: Stephen Warbrick, Taso Mastorakis *Music: Bradford Reed *Sound Design: Britt Meyers (Great City Productions) *Lip-synch: Chester Kneble *Interns: Andrew Clark, Carlo Daleo, Jeremy Duvall, Rachel Hoffman, Chester Kneble, Gene Lee, Glenn Torens, Jesse Wang *Dialogue Premix: Ian Stynes *Producer: Ollie Green *Executive Producers: Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick, Ben Gruber *Story Consultants: Dave Hughes, Nick Weidenfeld *Executive Producers for Williams Street: Keith Crofford, Nick Weidenfeld *Opening Theme: "Rubber Bullets", performed by 10cc *Radio Song: "Cocaine", performed by Cheeseburger Voice Cast *The Warden: David Wain *Alice, Jacknife: Christy Karacas *Jared: Teddy Cohn *The Twins: Richard Mather *Gay Inmate (later “Paul”), Skinny, others: Chris McCulloch *Gay Inmate (later “Jean”), Perverted Inmate (later "Fatty"), others: Stephen Warbrick Additional voices: *Kristofer Wollinger *Aaron Augenblick *Melissa Brown (voice of Alice in original radioplay and animatic) Trivia *Christy Karacas figures that the pilot went through at least fifteen different script drafts before they finalized everything. He states that they created an animatic to pitch the show to Augenblick, although it is not certain if this would be the same Bunny Love reel that appears on the DVD. *Dave Willis (of Aqua Teen Hunger Force fame) helped out with rewrites to the script, and one suggestion (Warden tearing the rabbit's skin off) made it into the final product. *Dave Hughes and Nick Weidenfeld also helped to refine the story further, and it was Weidenfeld who suggested that Karacas replace the actress that they initially cast as Alice. *Early pre-production designs of the characters were shown in a 2006 bump for the pilot. This could likely be due to the fact that Adult Swim had yet to receive updated materials, or simply didn't use them for whatever reason. An even earlier teaser design of Jailbot appeared in the initial announcement for the Superjail pilot in 2005. A different version of the jailyard was also shown in the concept art, along with the Warden's eye-craft having a different appearance. *This episode marks the debuts of a few recurring inmates. Bird and Gary were included in the early press profiles by Adult Swim, though others in this episode (such as the gay couple and Gary's cellmate) would become favorites of the crew and receive bigger roles throughout the series. *Augenblick Studios produced the animation for the pilot through 2006, going by the artists' resumes. Revisions made to script *The Warden was to originally dress in black and have stubble, along with not wearing a top hat. Due to David Wain being cast, the crew reworked their initial design and modeled the Warden after Wain, as well as giving him a "Willy Wonka" sort of image. It would appear this version of the Warden didn't make it far past early concept art. *In an abandoned sequence, Jacknife wound up on the moon after being shot into space. He would then find himself in a long-forgotten lunar base of Superjail with skeletons everywhere, and then explode and die to exposure in the vacuum of space. *The young girl at the start of the episode was originally intended to be Jacknife's daughter, but the detail was dropped as it was considered a more humorous outcome for him to have hijacked a car and have found a kid inside it. An early character design of "Jacknife and daughter" could be seen in the original bump announcing the Bunny Love pilot. *According to Karacas and Warbrick, Jacknife originally had a line in one of the drafts, but the idea of him speaking was quickly thrown out. *The Twins were directly stated to be "super-criminals" in early planning notes and drafts for the pilot. Karacas states that they decided the characters worked better as ambiguous troublemakers, rather than being outright evil or villainous. The line about suspending their privileges may be a remnant of that concept. They were meant to be a litmus test for the Warden, who had to keep them contained to prove he could keep any sort of inmate from escaping. Differences between animatic and aired version An undated animatic reel of this episode was included as a bonus on the Superjail! Season 1 DVD in 2010. These are the changes made between this version and the completed story. *Alice's first line to the starving convict was changed by the time the episode went to the animation stage and the role was recast: **Line spoken in animatic: "Do you think I'm sexy?" **Line in the aired version: "Hey skinny, it's showtime." *Alice is voiced by Melissa Brown in the reel. *Instead of a TV error screen, a title card reading "Moments later" is shown after Jared panics about the changed suit order. *The Twins' backbeat was originally to be a more '80s new wave-sounding synth beat. *Janice does not speak in the animatic, but has one line in the finished version. Differences from series *"Rubber Bullets" was intended to be the opening to the actual series, but the crew could not afford to pay royalties for the continued usage of the song. While the song remains intact on the DVD release, the animatic reel has the series' theme “Comin’ Home” substituted for its opening sequence. *The ending credits' format differs somewhat from the one shown in the first season. Karacas and Warbrick are credited in the voice cast, while their roles would wind up uncredited in the other episodes. Two extra "cards" were added for the season 1 credits: An image of the Warden's tower (showing the staff and Twins inside), and an image of a bodybuilder. *The Superjail! title logo does not have Karacas, Warbrick, and Gruber credited. This episode also uses a post-credits stinger, something not normally used in the series episodes (save for Vacation in the second season). *The Warden and the Twins directly interact in this episode, as opposed to the series where the Twins are mostly "behind the scenes" in their chaos. The Warden also displays a more sadistic demeanor than seen in the rest of the first season, while the Twins seem to actually fear being killed as a result of their scheme. Image Gallery References Category:Episodes Category:Utada Category:Superjail Category:Mediamass